The Times of Israel March 23, 2015 opinion/blog
Quite often, people in the most developed of countries find themselves the targets of vitriol and racism. This problem is still huge in the United States and across the Atlantic in Europe. Every group wants its pain heard, its trauma shared, and for people to change their ways. We frequently see alliances between minority groups for that purpose precisely: African-American groups with Palestinian ones, for example. One group has been left out to dry, however, by this explosion in alliance-building: Jews
Let’s be perfectly honest here; most people think anti-Semitism is dead. Wealthy Jews permeate the upper echelon of many societies, after all, and people have started to differentiate between Israel and Jews. The perception is as much one of these factors as of a trend: anti-Semitism used to be so overt that people have begun to make it subtle, to avoid notice. “Times are better than ever before”, some say. So why does it feel so…bad?
The reason is because anti-Semitism is not dead. Every single day, Jewish men, women, and children are discriminated against. Whether it was in third grade when a friend’s parents told him he couldn’t play with me because I was Jewish, or when someone told Rachel Beyda she couldn’t be impartial because she was part of the Jewish community at UCLA, anti-Semitism is still a traumatizing experience. At least once I have felt that my life was in danger because of it. And yet, people are proclaiming that Jews are too used to playing the victim…even Jews themselves. The facts show that the reason Jews overwhelmingly feel scared is not because they enjoy wringing their hands and complaining, but because they have a legitimate reason to feel fear. Consider the situation of Jews worldwide:
CLICK HERE to keep reading
No comments:
Post a Comment